Splinter
by Xocotl
Summary: "Your neck, your back, the palm of your hand where the curve of his lips are forever imprinted. When you close your eyes, it all starts again." Written for the johnlock gift exchange.


__Splinter: Written for the johnlock gift exchange on tumblr for **kuroi-hoshikuzu**, based on their prompt, "lips on a strained neck". Short, sweet, and totally creepy! I hope y'all enjoy it!

_Ring. Ring. Ring._ The telephone rings on the wall. You watch it, stare at it, as it wails. Slowly, you edge closer. _Ring. Ring. Ring._ You reach out, shaking. Carefully, you slide it from its cradle, polished wood soft in your palm.

Nothing on the other end.

Nothing but breathing, almost sexual in its sound.

_Click._ You hang up. You just want to be free of him. You cannot remember the time when he was not lingering in the corner of your eye, watching you just as you were watching him. How he slunk up to you like you were his prey and as you still are. The smile, the wit, the charm. You would never be able to see through it.

He had you then and he has you now.

The phone rings. _Ring. Ring. Ring._ This time, you answer and you wait. Wait a little longer, wait for the breathing to become words, words to become phrases, phrases to become something greater than you can resist.

"Come home."

You hang up, pivot on your heel, and move away. You cannot resist something so unattainable. You could throw your phone away and run, run somewhere too far for him to find you, but you don't. You don't. You go back the way you came, go home.

It is the life, the cases, the things that he throws at you that keeps you on your toes and makes you squirm as he watches you, analyzes you with his cold eyes. When he's gone, you feel empty. You miss his presence, the comfort of another mind, another body, against yours. It disturbs you, or it should. But you can't think about it. You're not ready to think about it. He won't let you think about it.

All you can hear is the deafening silence of your heart pounding against your ribs.

All you know is the sound of his laughter as it haunts you. He is the only thing on your mind, in your heart, consuming your soul.

It burns you, consumes your flesh as you try to catch a breath from the ashes. It's a great ruin, this life of yours and there is no going back from where you've been. You ponder it, but the thought slides away. It's as if you can no longer see yourself from outside, as if you are no longer you anymore.

You sit alone in your room. You can no longer hear him in the rooms below. Your mind is frozen in the cold wasteland of your memories. How he haunts you even in your waking hours. You will never be free. You think of running, but it will only take you back to him. You have tried, you remember.

He followed you, found you, forced you to bend to him once more. He shattered you, shattered your ability to move for days. He chained you to himself, making you his in the ways only he can do. You were fractured by him, there is no you without him now. You can no longer remember the taste of freedom. Was it bittersweet on your tongue? You don't know. You only know the taste of him now.

A bang. He grabs you, throws you against the door. His hands are at the sides of your head. Did he know that you were thinking of breaking free? Does he know how much you fear him? How obsessed you are with his skin? Does he know? Does he?

"Fight me off." He hisses in your ear, moving closer to you until you can't feel the cold air against your skin. His voice is the harshest of velvets. "Fight me off. I dare you." The heat is unbearable, he is burning you. He needs you to be a challenge, to occupy him, for even if you fail, he will be mesmerized. He needs it, the distraction. He has to have it and you are all there is. You have become the gears that make his mind continue to turn.

You cannot hurt him, he is untouchable in his immortal beauty. You cannot mar the skin he wears like armor before you. Yet you feel his touch searing you to the bone, burning his initials into your flesh.

"Hurt me. Make me bleed!" He shouts, angry. Angry with you because you cannot do as he demands of you. He leers impossibly closer. "Give in to me. Do it! Do what I want!" And you are too weak to refuse him. He is pulling you apart, making you do as he commands you not to.

Once more since the madness began so long ago that you can no longer remember the start, you wish someone would deliver you from this evil. There's no where to run to and no one to help you. Nobody can save you from him. He knows you, everything about you. And he wants everything from you. When your voice cracks, a scream for mercy muted by hatred so intense it hurts, you realize again how much you love him. Every moment, each renewal, you know it again. It haunts you in a pain so fine it's almost sweet. Almost as sweet as the lips against yours that blur time away.

He has you in every way he wants. All the ways you cannot deny him. He is never going to be done with you and you hate it, you love it, you fear it, you want it. It's the most damning thing about you, this thirst for something that is toxic to you. The poison has to run through your veins. There's nothing more you desire than to feel it destroy you slowly, painfully, a lovely agony.

But when he smiles that brilliant smile, that terrible smile that brings a demonic light to his eyes, you are lost in him all over again. And when you look in the mirror, you pretend not to see the 'SH' that is broiled into your flesh. Just another war wound that you wish you had never had to live through. Just another scar that tells the story of your skin. You wish you could take it off but it's your history, your skin, you can't escape it. Just like how you can't escape him. So you wear them both, all the while wishing you could rip them away and keep them closer.

It's part of it, figuring it all out as you go, as he hunts you day by night. It's part of the cycle you wish you could break but fear the collapse of all you know.

Sometimes he reaches out to touch you with shaking hands, his finger running down your cheek. Is he worried that you're not real? That, like everything else, you are a figment of his great intellect? That maybe you will cease to be as he has. That one day, he will look back and find that you'd never been there, just as you've always feared.

Sometimes you're not sure what's real anymore. His lips on your strained neck, you screaming for mercy, him calling your name in the darkness that is both your souls. You haven't the strength to get away and he has you as a part of himself. You can no longer tell where you end and he begins. It's a tangled weave that he has created, forever keeping you in the cage of his heart. The marks that run down your neck remind you with each gasp that you are his and, though he may not know it, he is yours.

Standing alone in the rain, you wonder how it is you got here. You can still remember the taste of his tongue and the feel of his teeth. You cannot imagine a life without him now that you have had him for so long. How are you to get along alone after what he has done to you?

The scars you bear from his gentle touch mar your skin. You neck, your back, the palm of your hand where the curve of his lips are forever imprinted. When you close your eyes, it all starts again. The day you met him replays and then the days that followed it, over and over again, you live it.

So when you look up, he stands before you once more. You are never free. In death, he lives on. He leans in, places the softest of kisses on your neck.

"It's a cycle, isn't it?" He whispers in your ear, "life goes round and round, forever repeating."

You open your eyes, and smile. Yes, you'll meet him again. He never did tell you a lie, and he'd never start npw. You and him, by the marks you bear on your skin, will come together some day. Of this, you are certain. Of this, you must be.


End file.
